


Picking Fights

by RosalindInPants



Series: Love and Trauma [4]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Brawl - Freeform, Canon Gap, Fist Fights, Gen, Whump, depressed Santi picking fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindInPants/pseuds/RosalindInPants
Summary: On the ship bound for Alexandria, Santi copes with his feelings by picking a fight he can't win. Takes place between the betrayal at the end of Ash and Quill and Khalila's first chapter in Smoke and Iron.
Series: Love and Trauma [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1532804
Comments: 6
Kudos: 4





	Picking Fights

**Author's Note:**

> Filling prompts from my own whumptober list: broken glass | three-on-one fight | team captured together.
> 
> From Wolfe's contingency-of-death letter, Ash and Quill:  
> "I know you will be angry. I know you will want to drive out your grief with action. Don't. For my sake, don't throw yourself into battles, or pick fights with giants, or whatever mad thing comes into your head."
> 
> From Smoke and Iron:  
> “This Santi was sharp, aggressive, and she didn’t like it. Khalila ignored the question and said, ‘I’m surprised they haven’t locked you in.’  
> ‘I’m clearly not that dangerous. After all, I let them take me back at the Brightwell castle,’ he said. ‘I let them take Chris.’ She felt the self-directed anger behind that. Searing.”

Grief made Santi careless. He should have planned, should have analyzed his tactical options and deployed his meager forces to the best of his ability. He had only a single good soldier and three young scholars, one of them sick and another bearing unseen wounds, but if he’d really thought, he could have accomplished something with that. Christopher would have reminded him that they’d done more with less.

But Christopher wasn’t there.

Christopher was in prison again. Alone and afraid in the dark. Facing torture and execution. Santi would have gladly put the chains back on his own wrists and ankles and locked himself behind bars if it meant he could be by his partner’s side. He would gladly have endured any torture to spare Chris even a moment of pain, even just to be able to hold him. Better to suffer together than to be spared alone.

Better still to make the ones responsible for their current separation suffer. The Brightwells and the Archivist might be beyond his reach, but there were more than enough of the smugglers' so-called cousins crewing the ship.

And they’d left the doors unlocked.

So he found himself cornered in the mess hall below decks well past midnight, three burly sailors closing in on him. One held a knife. Another, a brown glass bottle. The last held nothing, but had fists of sufficient size that the lack of a weapon would be no detriment.

A sane man would have regretted provoking them. A wise man would never have done it in the first place. But in that moment, Niccolo Santi was neither wise nor sane, and he didn’t especially care what the outcome of the fight would be. If they killed him, so be it. He would be with Chris again all the sooner.

And if he took even one of them down with him, it would be worth it.

The one with the bottle swung first, splattering a trail of pungent-smelling liquor over Santi’s head as he ducked. When the bottle failed to connect with its target, the man stumbled, off balance, but Santi had no chance to take advantage of that vulnerability. The one with the knife was coming at him, and that had to be the priority. Nothing more dangerous than a knife in close quarters. In Santi’s hands, it would even the odds considerably. If he could get it. Taking a risk, he lunged for the knife-wielder’s arm.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the large-fisted man’s fist coming. No time to dodge the blow, but enough to brace for it. Even so, the force of it froze Santi in his tracks, letting the knife-wielder jump back out of reach.

Santi recovered quickly, though, faster than the big sailor expected. Evading the second massive fist, he landed a swift jab to the eyes that sent the sailor reeling back.

He paid for that small victory with the sharp pain of the drunk’s bottle striking his shoulder, narrowly missing his head. Before he could counter, the glint of steel drew his attention to the one with the knife, charging at him.

This time, he caught the man by the arm, swinging him around to serve as a shield against the big sailor’s fist, which landed hard enough on the knife-wielder’s back to push both him and Santi backward.

Up against the wall now. Not an ideal position by far, but he nearly had the knife, and that was worth it. A little more pressure on the wrist…

Too late, he saw the bottle coming. He sidestepped, but in doing so, he lost the knife. The blade clattered to the floor, and the best he could do was kick it away to rattle down the narrow stairway into the hold.

With a crash, the bottle hit the wall and shattered, sending shards of glass flying. The sharp edges of the bottle raked the arm that he threw up to block the next swing at his face, tearing the sleeve of his shirt.

Spots flashed before Santi’s eyes as a knee collided with his groin. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he stomped hard on the now-knifeless man’s foot and drew back his fist for a punch.

That was the last blow he got in. A second later, the largest of the three had him by the throat against the wall, laughing.

Three more punches to the stomach in quick succession. The last hit the tender spot still bruised from his fight with Brendan Brightwell. His vision swam from pain and lack of oxygen, but his mind was clear. Calculating. Planning.

A hard kick to the big one’s groin and roll out. Get some distance, a weapon. Get out.

But there were more voices now, jeering.

“Whatcha got there, Tiny?”

“High Garda Captain! Ha! Not so tough now, huh?”

“C’mon, let us have a swing at him.”

Abruptly, the pressure on Santi’s neck let up, and he sucked in air as his body was hauled away from the wall and spun to face the onlooking sailors. Ten of them now. Too many. The large sailor’s large arms locked around Santi to hold him in a full nelson.

“Who’s first?” the big sailor called.

They crowded around, a pack of jackals, mocking. Santi met their laughter with a wide and feral grin. “Come on then, cowards. Take the only chance you’ll ever get to hit a High Garda captain.”

A few of them flinched at that, to his satisfaction, but he didn’t have time to gloat. A hard backhand snapped his head to the side. He recovered quickly, looking his assailant in the eye and smiling as a trickle of blood ran from his split lip.

"That the best you can do, smuggler?" Santi taunted.

He got a kick in the balls for that. He didn't care. Let them come. He hardly felt the blows. They couldn't do anything worse to him than the Archivist was doing to Chris. He didn’t even flinch when the one with the broken bottle pushed to the front, brandishing his jagged-edged weapon.

“Dressed up all pretty, ain’t you, _captain_?” the drunk sneered. His breath reeked of alcohol and rot. “Don’t seem right, butcher like you gets dressed up in silk. Got a pretty face, too. See how you like having it all cut up.”

Santi spat at the sailor. Did the idiot really think he cared about that? He was a soldier. A scarred face was just a good story to tell at the Hive. No, not that anymore. More likely a good story to tell Chris when they compared notes in heaven on their gruesome deaths.

Reflexively, he blinked as the bottle swung, but the pain came in his chest. Like a cat’s claws tearing their way down his body to the tune of jeers and ripping silk.

“What is this?” Those three sharp, clear words in a young woman’s icy voice cut through the sailors’ crowing.

Santi’s head snapped up, and his plea for Khalila to run was on the tip of his tongue. But no, it wasn’t Khalila, but Red Anit, standing halfway down the stairs that came from the deck above, glaring at the assembled sailors with an intensity far too much like Christopher’s.

Those dark, blazing eyes hurt more than his cuts and bruises.

“Lady Anit,” said the big sailor who held Santi while the others turned and bowed to their master’s daughter. “We caught this one stirring up trouble, thought we’d teach him a lesson.”

“Did you?” Anit descended a single stair, her gaze now fixed on the man holding Santi. “I thought my orders were clear. The prisoners are not to be harmed. Unhand him.”

The sailor’s arms dropped away, and Santi staggered, barely keeping his feet.

“Aww, Lady Anit, what’s the fun in that?” the drunk whined. “We ain’t gonna kill him, just-”

“Another word, and I will have you dragged out on the deck and flogged,” Anit snapped. “That goes for all of you. Did any of you think that the Archivist might refuse to pay my father for damaged goods? I’m sure I don’t need to explain what would happen to the ones responsible for spoiling the greatest bargain my father has ever made. Clear out, all of you. Don’t let me see your faces near the prisoners again.”

With murmured assent, they went. Not so mutinous an undertone to it as Santi would have expected. They respected the girl, it seemed, or at least the credible threat of her father’s wrath. Interesting. Probably. With the rush of adrenaline dying down, it was getting harder to think clearly.

Anit turned her gaze on him, assessing. She didn’t apologize for the actions of her men. He didn’t thank her for her intervention. Some things were better left unsaid.

“Can you make it back to your cabin?” she asked.

“Yes.” He'd made it through Philadelphia with an infected Greek fire burn. Some bruises and a few shallow cuts wouldn't stop him.

“Good. I suggest you go.” Turning, she ascended the stairs without looking back.

Scolded by a child. He should have been ashamed of that, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Santi poured himself a mug of beer from the mess hall’s keg before dragging himself back to his room. Foul-tasting stuff, but he wasn’t going to get a better anesthetic, and he’d been in enough brawls to know he would be glad for it later.

The pain wasn’t so bad. He’d had far worse, recently even. This was nothing next to the burn from Philadelphia. He should have been able to shrug it off, but dawn found him flat on his back in bed, tears in his eyes. Longing for Christopher, his gentle hands and his chiding voice. Santi could almost hear him.

_“What have you gone and done now? Really, what were you thinking, my dear? This is going to sting and it is nobody’s fault but your own.”_

He could almost feel Chris’s hands on him, the cool cloth he would use to clean the long cuts left by the bottle, lecturing all the while. A soft whisper of lips on his forehead.

Chris was probably in worse pain than this right now, and here Santi was daydreaming of having his lover take care of him. The guilt was enough to propel Santi to his feet, though he had to hold the wall for balance. He should have been able to handle the ship’s rocking better.

Muttering curses under his breath, he grabbed the first shirt within reach and tugged it on, letting out a hissing breath at the abrasion of fabric on wounded skin. He had to pull himself together. The children would be waking, and he couldn’t let them see him like this.


End file.
